WrestleMania 21

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The WWE has returned to the Xbox, but was it worth the wait?

By David Clayman

Compared to the PS2, Xbox owners have had slim pickings when it comes to WWE wrestling games. This is especially odd considering that when the system launched Bill Gates was joined by the Brahma Bull himself. While the PS2-exclusive SmackDown! series has continued to evolve with each yearly installment, Xbox owners have been left with Acclaim's lackluster Legends series and the older RAW games.

I had hoped that all this would change with the announcement of WrestleMania 21 by Studio Gigante. With highly detailed player models and motion captured animation, the game started to visually shine early in its development cycle. If it could match the accessibility and gameplay options of SmackDown!, wrestling fans would have themselves a treat. Looks however, can be deceiving. While WrestleMania 21 has the outward appearance of a champion, it plays like a 98-pound weakling.

This is Studio Gigante's first attempt at a wrestling game, so it hasn't had the benefit of missteps and fan reactions like the WWE franchise on PS2. They did, however, have the opportunity to harness the power of the Xbox to wow gamers with a realistic presentation and smooth online play. For some people, these two factors alone will be enough to sell them on the title, but hiding beneath the surface, there are a number of gameplay issues.

Simple Control The controls in WrestleMania are amazingly easy to get the hang of. The A button enacts a quick grapple and submission grapples are mapped to the B button. Strikes such as punches, kicks, head butts, and crotch shots, are performed by hitting X along with the directional pad or analog stick. Most environmental interactions are handled through the use of the L trigger. This includes climbing turnbuckles, getting on top of tables, and climbing in and out of the ring. There is also the option to run, pick up weapons, initiate an Irish Whip, and call for outside interference when the conditions are right. Like most wrestling games, each character has a stamina meter that determines their ability to stay on their feet. Under this is a heat bar that fills up with each successful attack, broken submissions, or taunts. Maximum heat enables a wrestler to perform their special move by tapping A and B at the same time. The system is about as simple as it gets, and can really be picked up by anyone, wrestling buff or not.

The grappling would be too simplistic if not for the countering system. There are two types of counters, one for grapple moves, and one for strikes and they are assigned to the left and right triggers respectively. With each move, a small blue icon appears next to the wrestler's name that indicates the opportunity to perform a reversal. Depending on a character's stats, they will have more time to pull off one of these moves. Like basic combat, the system is easy to get the hang of and after a few rounds players will be reversing almost every grapple, and many of the strikes. On the harder difficulty settings the indicator for reversals is removed and leaves it up to the gamer to get the timing right. For every counter there is also a unique animation, which really shows off the game's slick motion capture work.

So far I've described the makings of a decent, if rather basic wrestling game. However, as soon as two WWE superstars face off, problems emerge from behind the game's gleaming fa¿ade. The first bump in the road has to do with collision detection. In early builds of the game, wrestlers would bump invisible objects, and stagger through each other when more than two people occupied the ring. These problems have been addressed, but not fixed. This is mostly frustrating when going for dives, aerial attacks, or slams to characters on the ground. The game decides that characters are "up" almost as soon as they begin to rise from the mat. This causes a discrepancy between when it looks like players can drop on a downed character, and when it actually connects. Missing with an elbow drop doesn't just result in a bruised ego; it causes your character to writhe in pain for a few seconds leaving him vulnerable to a rebuttal. This adds injury to insult, and makes the collision error endlessly irritating.